On Nov 5, 2006, at 10:41 PM, Norman Palardy wrote:
On Nov 05, 2006, at 10:08 PM, Lars Jensen wrote:
Phun Phone Phact:
In Area Code 781 (Greater Boston, MA), you have to dial 781, even
though you are calling from 781! This happened a few years ago; I
doubt it's unique but it's the only case like it I know of.
We have lots of those in Canada simply because an area code is so
physically large that a call is long distance in the same area code
I live in one which covers most of Southern Alberta but its long
distance to nearly everything
Some interesting facts.
In most areas of North America, it was decided that the ability to
dial within a local area code by only using the last seven digits was
restricting the number of possible phone numbers in North America.
Prefixes that matched area codes could not be used and there could be
no duplicate phone numbers with different areas codes. For example
(604) 778-xxxx meant that 778 could not be used as an area code. In
Vancouver, BC 778 is now a new area code that overlaps the 604 region
(Most of British Columbia).
By 2001, most phone companies in urban areas were experiencing a
rapid demand for new telephone numbers. This was caused by the by the
more rapid increase in fax machines, wireless phones, Internet
connections, pagers, home, business and data lines than ever before.
As a result, the regions were quickly running out of phone numbers.
The solution was to add a new area codes to the same areas in
November 2001. As there would be different area codes coexisting in
the same geographic area, it was determined to be simpler to dial the
area code along with the 7 digit local phone number in order for the
network to route local calls correctly than to re-assign numbers to
separate regions. BC had already done this once when they separated
Vancouver Island from the 604 area code and made it 250.
Terry
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